Fondation Giacometti

This man’s bust, one of the most spectacular created by Alberto Giacometti, was never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime, and was therefore never given a title. It was one of the last pieces on which Giacometti worked, and was found standing, in clay, in his Parisian studio when death took him by surprise in Italy in January 1966. The first casts in bronze were made for the retrospective that took place in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in 1969. The piece was then entitled “Buste d’Elie Lotar”, but for practical reasons (three different busts were exhibited under the same title) it was then generally called “Lotar III”. Elie Lotar was a photographer of Romanian origin who had associated, before the war, with the surrealist milieu. Alcoholic and without a penny, he was part of an expanding group of parasites and crooks whom Giacometti used to welcome when he became famous from the middle of the Fifties. In Giacometti’s scale of values Lotar’s decline conferred on him by reversal, an equivalent greatness,. Indeed the three busts of Lotar that Giacometti made from 1964 have a particular monumental aspect. As often happened with Giacometti, the shape of Lotar’s bold head merges with that of Giacometti’s brother Diego, contributing to making this seated bust not the portrait of a man in particular but a work of art of universal scope.

Signature at the bottom to its proper left "Alberto Giacometti"
Cast number at the bottom to its proper left "EA I/II"

Annette GIACOMETTI
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection

2005 Alberto Giacometti au donjon de Vez, Vez (France), Donjon de Vez, from June 18th to October 2nd 2005
2005 Réouverture du musée, Paris (France), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, from December 15th 2005 to August 25th 2006
2006 Alberto Giacometti - Bror Hjorth, Stockholm (Sweden), Liljevalchs Konsthall, from September 23rd 2006 to January 7th 2007, no. 31
2007 Living, looking, making, London (United Kingdom), Gagosian Gallery, from March 27th to May 19th 2007

Véronique WIESINGER (under the direction of), Alberto Giacometti au Donjon de Vez, Oeuvres de la Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Vez : Donjon de Vez, 2005, p. 32, ill. p. 33
Véronique WIESINGER, Bo NILSSON, Alberto Giacometti. Bror Hjorth, Stockholm : Liljevalchs Konsthall, 2006, p. 92, ill. p. 73
Véronique WIESINGER, Bo NILSSON, Alberto Giacometti. Partial reprint with corrections, Stockholm : Liljevalchs Konsthall, 2006, cat. no. 31, p. 93, ill. p. 73
Living, Looking, Making. Giacometti, Fontana, Twombly, Serra, London : Gagosian Gallery, 2007, p. 46 & 105, ill. p. 46, 47 & 105